Legacy
by fidefortitude
Summary: Rebuilding Heaven does not mean rewriting its history. Now they have learnt this, they must put it into practice.


When Castiel next returned to Heaven, almost a week after he had last left, Hannah was glad to see him.

She felt terrified, too. She had willingly left him, guarded his jail cell- she had betrayed him. While he had not been cruel to her upon his escape from his cell, the two had been united by a common enemy, and she was given to understand he had been grieving. Now he was back, his actions could be far crueller, far more violent.

It would not shock her. Deserters from factions were never treated well, a fact known since the events of four years ago.  
Castiel was known to have slaughtered many thousands of their siblings that dark year he had proclaimed himself God.

He walked through the door slowly, eyes downcast and face set in what was, even to her untrained eye, clearly a fake expression of stoicism. She, along with the half a dozen others in the office adjourning the door to Heaven, watched him with wary eyes; everyone had defected from Castiel at one point in time or another. Everyone knew that the former garrison captain was known for unpredictable actions- sometimes violently unpredictable ones.

But he gave them all one long, sad look, and sat down on one of the desks near them. He stared at his hands in his lap; or, no, staring beyond them. Hannah nervously shuffled a few loose papers in her hands, and slowly walked towards the man she had betrayed.

"Castiel?" she asked softly, stopping a metre from him, a wary distance. "How have you been?"

Castiel looked up to her like he had only just realised she was there, straightening his back and regarding her with new interest. Hannah couldn't help but recoil slightly, fear driving her actions.

He smiled, only slightly, but gently. Hannah felt equally relieved and confused.

"I'm- okay, Hannah. I'm okay. It's- I'm- I'm okay."

Hannah wasn't as well-versed in human cadence as her brother, but she recognised distress emanating from his grace as he spoke. She spoke equally as gently.

"No you're not."

Castiel looked almost hurt- a terrifying look she had only seen a few times before, a look she despised to see.

"No," he finally admitted, looking down at his hands again. "I'm not. But I did not come here to speak with you of my own problems."

Hannah tilted her head.

"What did you come to speak with us of, then?"

Castiel grimaced slightly, but set his jaw with a determined expression.

"I want to see his cell."

* * *

They hadn't been sure which one he wanted to see, but the location was the same. Metatron looked up, eyes boring into the small group as they led Castiel to the cells.

"Come to gloat?" He asked, looking almost excited at the prospect of speaking to another.

Castiel did not reply. He did not even deign to look at Metatron. He walked to the ruins of the cell next to him.

"We moved Gadreel's body," Hannah murmured to Castiel as he stood in the rubble. "There is nothing here for you to see."

Castiel didn't seem so certain.

"He was here for thousands of years," he muttered. He stepped forward to touch the broken and torn stone, edged with a thousand lines of warding and the soft glow of Heaven's power.

"I'm sorry?"

"Thousands of years," Castiel repeated. He looked sullen. "Because we remembered his actions with Lucifer."

Hannah didn't understand what Castiel was getting at- she went silent, observing him for clues to his meaning.

He sighed softly, fingers dragging down the stone. "And now we must remember him for thousands of years more. But we must remember him for all he did. Not just his wrong actions."

Hannah frowned.

"Is there something you wish to do to- remember him?"

Castiel looked from his inspection of the stone to Hannah. He was clearly resigned to something.

"To remember all our brothers and sisters."

Hannah's unneeded breath hitched in her throat at the sudden and alien concept to her. Behind her, her other accompanying siblings stared in confusion at Castiel.

"How?" One of them finally asked.

Castiel looked from them to the broken stone left by Gadreel's final sacrifice. And then he lifted his hand to the stone once more, hand glittering with his stolen, burning power.

The warding frayed and broke in places, Heaven bending and blackening, if only slightly.

Enochian was burnt into the rock.

A name written in Enochian.

_Gadreel_.

And Castiel turned to Hannah, his hand leaching stolen power.

"Did anyone else die when Heaven was retaken from Metatron?"

Hannah's confusion lifted, replaced by understanding.

Understanding and love for her estranged brother.

"Selaphiel," she replied softly. "We found him at the encampment where Metatron had been gaining human followers."

Castiel turned back to the wall. He burnt a second name into it, underneath the first.

Slowly, one by one, her siblings came forward, eyes trained on the wall with an air of confusion for its significance.

"Ambriel."

A third name burnt in Enochian, into the side of Heaven's stone.

"Chenaniah."

A fourth.

And the list began to grow, names in tiny Enochian text, forced into the stone of the home of God, forevermore.

Slowly, Castiel stopped, as his brothers and sisters began to pick up on the concept themselves and burned names into the stone marked by Gadreel's sacrifice.

He stood by Hannah, eyes glittering with tears.

If it was a human response to human emotions, Hannah did not comment on it.

* * *

Weeks passed, and Castiel's visits were few and sparse, each time a brief visit, a few words exchanged on the matters of Heaven's rebuilding. He spent most of his time on his visits at Gadreel's cell.

It had become a place to find many angels, both inscribing names and inscribed on the walls. The tiny writing of each name meant there was still ample space for many, which Hannah considered equally a good thing and a bad.

She had added many names on herself. If she had elicited a human-like emotion from herself in doing so, nobody commented on it.

One visit from Castiel- where he seemed more distressed than usual and was murmuring about demons under his breath- was little more than an hour. He left briskly, without acknowledging anyone- he didn't look like he could.

When Hannah went to Gadreel's cell that night, she found thousands of names freshly inscribed- when she realised from what point in time the dead originated from, she had been saddened to know he remembered the names of all those that had died by his hand.

Saddened and relieved.

She had gotten more used to these conflicting human-like emotional responses. She had almost stopped ascribing them to humanity alone.

* * *

Slowly, the flow of name-adding became less frequent. One wall was almost entirely taken up by now. Her sisters and brothers visited almost daily, a silent procession, dismissing Metatron as one as they mourned their siblings.

There had just been room enough to add Raphael. An addition of Castiel's own; everyone had known it was his name to add.

Gabriel was added many times, but always disappeared from the stone when the inscriber had left- nobody was quite sure who was removing it, as it would take far more power to knit Heaven back together than it took them to push it gently apart.

Metatron was not told what his siblings were doing behind his cell, where he could not see- it felt right to keep this from him. It felt like the only true justice they could bestow.

And if anyone gave in to their free will-bestowed emotions when at the cell, nobody commented on it.

* * *

Eventually, after months since Castiel's last visit, he came again, his eyes red and his voice hoarse as he exchanged meaningless and hasty pleasantries. He seemed desperate and terrified to get to the cell.

Hannah found him still there a day later, sitting on the floor with his hand still radiating power and his eyes staring unseeing at a newly inscribed name.

She had not known Balthazar. But now Heaven would know him.

She gently pulled him from the ground and led him from Gadreel's cell- sitting him down beside her on a desk. She looked into her brother's eyes.

"Castiel." She spoke softly, with fear and concern battling in what she was given to understand was considered her heart. "How have you been?"

And he told her. Of his murders, of his sacrifice of so many for the sake of a single man. He cried, with tears streaming from his face and glittering softly with tiny pieces of his stolen grace, as he spoke of his betrayals of those he had cared for. Those who had trusted him.  
Of the man who he had loved, a man committed to a demonic fate he was trying and failing to save him from.

Hannah thought of her own transgressions, her own betrayals. And told him of them.

She discovered that a burden is easier to carry if two are shouldering the load.

* * *

Even now, names were still being added to the cell's walls. Samandriel, Uriel, Dumah, Ezekiel. Names inscribed forevermore in Heaven's memory. Names inscribed in a place of sacrifice, sacrifice reminding them of their true mission to humanity.

The pain was lessened in remembering them. The burden was slowly lifted from her siblings as they learnt to find their own way of coping, their own ways of supporting one another.

They had learnt free will the hard way; they were still learning even as they tried to bring Heaven back to its former self. Emotions were tiring to live by and not ignore and block out- sometimes she missed following orders rather than making her own.

But there was a wall of names that she could not let down.

It was hard. Remembering was hard.

But it was getting easier.


End file.
